I ordered 2 of these pumps from eBay and it took a while for them to arrive. But they finally arrived a week or two ago and I finally got the chance to test it out in the last few days.

Both are 24V DC air pumps and the smaller one is rated at 60W while the larger one is rated at 110W.

I tried both of them out in the pond for aeration and was very pleased that they worked. As a result, I’ve decided to use the smaller one and hook it up to the same 24V DC solar setup as the water circulation pumps.

Here it is running in a test setup:

You can see it is drawing a little less than 2.8A connected to two 12V DC batteries wired in series.

 Here is a wider view of it running. You can see the pump in the lower left and the air bubbling up farther out in the water in the upper right part of the picture.

Here is a closer in view of the air bubbles coming up:

I was worried that the pumps wouldn’t be high enough pressure to work in this setup since the aeration stone I put in the pond is about 2 meters deep, so the air pressure required to pump the air down into water this deep is quite high. I don’t think human lungs can do it. (I tried when the water level was quite a bit lower and I could barely do it at full blowing strength and it hurt and it felt like I might rupture something.)

But I’m quite pleased that these guys seem to work well. It means I can put our DC air pump project on hold while I finish with other now more high priority things.

Aeration of pond water is quite important, particularly down at the bottom where water can stay stagnant and eventually breed anaerobic bacteria. (I.e. become septic.) Additionally, the column of air bubbles also helps to circulate the water turning it over so that the water at the bottom and top mix together. This should help the circulation and filtration system by helping to make sure all water passes through the sand filtration zone in its turn.